Umbrella, Carl Coven

Painter, draughtsman, graphic artist

born: 24.11.1852 in Wiesbaden

died: 03.04.1928 in Amelingshausen-Sottorf

Schirm was the son of Wiesbaden city councillor Dr. Johann Wilhelm Schirm and his wife Sarah Anna, née Gronow. On the advice of the painter Christian Eduard Böttcher (1818-1889), he decided to become a painter in 1875, attended the Grand Ducal Baden School of Art in Karlsruhe and studied painting with his Darmstadt artist friend Eugen Bracht (1842-1921) in the Lüneburg Heath. In 1878, Schirm became a master student of the Norwegian Hans Fredrik Gude (1825-1903), who was a professor of landscape painting at the Karlsruhe Academy. In 1880/81, a study trip with Bracht and Adolf von Meckel (1856-93) took him through Syria, Palestine and Egypt, from where they brought back studies that they translated into large-format paintings.

He took part in various exhibitions, such as that of the "Köglerische Malschule", in which he made his Oriental paintings known in Wiesbaden as early as 1881. As a landscape painter, he was the youngest in the line of realistic painters Ludwig Knaus, Adolf Seel and Kaspar Kögler. Like most Wiesbaden artists, he was only able to make his fortune abroad, but remained attached to his native city even after his death. In 1883 he went to Breslau, then to Berlin. He was represented with five paintings at the "Jubilee Art Exhibition" in 1897 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Nassauischer Kunstverein e.V.. He was buried in Wiesbaden.